Q How did you become a quantity surveyor – was that something you were always interested in pursuing?

I kind of fell into quantity surveying to be honest! After school I went to America to do some travelling, and to play and coach football. A friend of mine was a quantity surveyor (QS) and was looking for someone, so when I got back to the UK I ended up starting as an Apprentice QS with a small company called Thomas and Adamson.

It's different now, but in those days apprenticeships involved making tea for clients and the team and doing basic arithmetic for the first six months. But you start to learn the business and they put me through my diploma. I then went on to study QS at university while continuing to work full time and learning on the job.

Later, I took a job at a major global firm and started to make my way up the ranks there. In my first “big job” as a Senior Quantity Surveyor I worked on a project that would have been about half a billion in Australian dollars, and within six months I was leading the project. It evolved from there and eventually I moved out to Australia to lead the Education team at that firm.

Q And what’s your current role at RPS?

Now that I’m at RPS I’m leading the Cost Advisory team and helping to grow our offer in that area of project advisory and delivery nationally.

I have a lot of experience in QS for social infrastructure projects – particularly in the education sector – and being able to offer our clients sector-specific QS expertise was a great complement to the work that RPS was already doing in education infrastructure. Both in terms of front-end project advisory and project management.

Education projects were a big focus when I joined and we’re still growing there, but the Cost Advisory team is focusing on a lot of different project types and clients beyond social infrastructure now, too.

Q What kind of projects is your team advising on right now?

Q How is the RPS approach to cost advisory different? What skills are you looking for when bringing new people into the team?

I think there is a perception that quantity surveying and quantity surveyors are quite transactional. People think it’s just a matter of developing a cost plan and delivering that to the client, but I believe that we can offer a lot more in terms of shaping the commercials of a project and advising on different aspects of a project’s costs in relation to design, procurement, contract, tendering and risk.

Quantity surveying shouldn’t just be a tick box exercise. Here at RPS we can add value by being more of a consultant or advisor, not just providing a standardised approach that only provides a view of costs at a point in time. A contractor can do that.  

Q How are market conditions affecting QS work at the moment?

There are lots of challenges for sure, but I guess this is what I mean when I say we are striving to make quantity surveying less transactional. It’s about demonstrating that the QS can drive design to cost, rather than cost to the design. This can include inputting on the procurement approach, tendering dynamics and market appetite in conjunction with the project manager.

If you have a proactive and engaged QS that’s sitting at your table every week, they’re giving you real time recommendations and advice, rather than just providing a number at set points in time. With market conditions as they are, costs are moving (sometimes significantly!) all the time. It’s important to be assessing regularly and feeding that information back so the risks can be managed.

I think that’s certainly a key to mitigating the current cost challenges.

Q What skills do you have to have to be a great cost advisor?

Q What projects are you most excited about at the moment?